Team Churn: The biggest risk to your Growth Tool Stack
Have you heard of the term “bus factor”? If only one or two people hold all the knowledge and expertise about your growth tools, your bus factor is dangerously low. This means that if they were to leave—whether by finding a new job, taking a long vacation, or, as the term suggests, getting hit by a bus—your team could face major setbacks.
Let's face it: team churn happens. People move on to new opportunities, life changes, or sometimes they just need a new challenge. But when someone leaves, especially someone who's been trained on your growth tool stack, it can feel like a bomb just dropped in the middle of your team. Suddenly, the person who knew the ins and outs of your critical tools is gone, and you're left scrambling to fill the gap.
Your technology team has probably developed a number of different strategies to ensure that the bus factor is not so low - but that’s for the tech stack. Many companies neglect to think about this concept when it comes to their growth stack.
So let me ask you this. How many tools are in your growth tool stack? 3? 5? 7?
And just to be clear these are the types of tools that make up your growth tool stack:
Marketing Automation Tools that comprise ways to send messages (emails, SMS, etc) to your customers.
Integration Tools that connect your growth tools together. This can be Customer Data Platforms, ELT or Reverse ETL Tools, Automation tools like Zapier and Make.
Product Analytics tools that help you understand what is happening in your product and how customers are interacting with it.
In-Product Activation tools that use no-code approaches to present messages to your users while they are inside your product.
Advertising platforms like Facebook and Google Ads.
Advertising analytics tools that help you to determine which campaigns are most effective.
Lead Scoring and Data Science tools that allow you to determine best fit leads and customer to act upon
Other tools that are integrated with your growth tools like a CRM and a Data Warehouse.
And how many people in your team are sufficiently adept at each of these tools in your stack? Are you starting to understand this challenge? So, how do you future-proof your growth stack against this inevitable churn?
Risk of Departure Metric
It starts with understanding your team’s proficiency in each tool. Let’s dig in further to this analysis. This metric evaluates the impact on the team's proficiency and overall productivity if a particular individual were to leave. Here's a step-by-step framework to calculate this risk:
1. Assess Individual Contribution
Determine each team member’s contribution to the team's proficiency with each tool. This involves evaluating their proficiency levels and the criticality of the tools they are proficient with.
2. Identify Critical Tools
Identify the tools that are most critical to the team's success and the proficiency required to manage them effectively.
3. Evaluate Team Coverage
Assess how well the remaining team members can cover the skills of the departing member. This involves looking at their proficiency levels in the critical tools.
4. Calculate Risk Score
Develop a formula to calculate a risk score based on the above factors.
Step-by-Step Calculation:
1. Define Proficiency Levels:
2. Create a Skills Matrix:
3. Assign Weights to Tools:
4. Calculate Weighted Scores:
5. Calculate Total Contribution per Member:
Sum the weighted scores for each team member across all tools.
6. Evaluate Team Coverage:
Determine the coverage by the remaining team members for each tool if one member leaves.
7. Calculate Risk Score for Departure:
For each team member, calculate the risk score based on their total contribution and the team's ability to cover their skills. A higher score indicates higher risk.
Risk Score Formula:
Example Calculation for Member 2:
Total Contribution of Member 2: 40
Average Coverage by Remaining Members for Each Tool:
Tool A: (3 + 2) / 2 = 2.5
Tool B: (4 + 5) / 2 = 4.5
Tool C: (2 + 4) / 2 = 3
Average Coverage: (2.5 + 4.5 + 3) / 3 = 3.33
Maximum Proficiency Level: 5
Repeat for each team member to determine the individual risk scores.
What’s Next?
By using this risk score metric, you can quantitatively assess the impact of a team member's departure on the team's overall proficiency and identify areas where cross-training or additional hires may be necessary to mitigate potential risks.
The next step you will take is to figure out how to mitigate this risk. Unlocking Growth can help bring your team up to speed, not just with the understanding and use of each tool, but with the growth methodology and mindset needed to power your growth team. Learn more about our Customer Activation Rocketship program.